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| Sunday, April 11, 2004 |
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| Sunday, April 11, 2004 |
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NOW that the season for peaches is on, it's best to know what is needed for the healthy growth of the fruit and time to clear any misconceptions about it. There are certain problems about peaches that bother gardeners so much that they want to uproot the trees. Talking to some of these gardeners has revealed the kind of problems peach cultivation can pose. Some of them have grown-up plants 'that have flowered but failed to bear fruit'. Some gardeners complain that every year, their peach leaves become severely infested with disease, leading to premature flower and fruit drop. The small, almost ping-pong size of the fruit bothers other cultivators. This makes them feel that peach cultivation is a waste of time, energy and resources. But it is not so. Peach, a rich source of proteins, minerals and vitamins, is one of the fruits best-suited to this region. It is a favourite with orchardists as it matures to the fruit-bearing stage very fast, almost in the third year of planting. Although the fruit is perishable, it finds a ready local market.
The trees that flower but fail to bear fruit in this region belong to varieties that are not suitable for the plains. Such varieties have a high chilling requirement for setting the fruit, a condition that is not met in the plains. There are different varieties like Partap, flordaprince, Shan-i-Punjab, Earli Grande, etc, that grow well in the plains. They have low chilling requirement. A plant gifted by a friend from a hilly area or obtained from an unspecified and unreliable source may fail to grow here.One way out is to get a plant from a reliable source like Punjab Agricultural University or the nursery of the Department of Horticulture, Punjab or Haryana. Premature fruit and flower drop in trees with disease-infested leaves is caused by the peach leaf curl aphids, insects that appear at the time when the plant starts growing and flowering after dormancy. It is completely curable. Spraying rogor--1.5 ml to a litre of water-- once during the last week of January and again immediately after fruit-setting will take care of this pest and you will get a full crop. The fruit of late ripening varieties gets infested with insects as it drags on the tree till the rains start. With the onset of rains, the fruit fly attacks the ripening fruits, which then become maggot infested. It is best to gthe row early ripening varieties as mentioned above. These are available between the third week of April to the first week of May, well before the onset of rains and escape fruit fly attack. The small of the fruit size may be due to the lack of proper nutrition, irrigation and above all, thinning. A fully-grown tree (above five-year-old) needs 750 gm of superphosphate and 850 gm of muriate of potash to be added to it along with 25 kg of well-rotten farmyard manure in December. The nitrogenous fertiliser, urea, is added in two split doses of 500 gram each, once in January after pruning and then in the second half of March after the fruit sets. In case of the above named varieties , irrigation is recommended at weekly intervals during March till the second week of April. Thereafter, it should be waered after a three to four days' interval. The basin of the tree should be as wide as the width of the tree. As the tree becomes heavy with fruit, it requires thinning. Else, the fruit size will remain very small. In early ripening varieties, the thinning is done till the third week of March while in Shan-i-Punjab it is done in the last week of March. The distance between fruits on a shoot should be 10 to 15 cm. The rest of the fruit should be removed. Shaking the fruit bearing branches also sheds some of the weak fruits. The operation must be finished before the pit (the seed) of the fruit hardens. This feature was published on April 4, 2004 |
